The Damnation of Faust

Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Oct. 30th and Nov. 1st  Hector Berlioz’s lush and romantic score blends perfectly with this oft-adapted tale of soul bargaining with the devil. Although this isn’t a full operatic production, the French composer’s knack for dramatic vocals and dark material surely will suit the classy Halloween crowd at Symphony Hall.

Margaret Garner

Auditorium Theatre, Nov. 1st to 9th  After 65 years, opera finally returns to the finely tuned Auditorium Theatre, and it’s a stunner: the Chicago premiere of Toni Morrison’s slave tragedy based on the same events that inspired her Pulitzer Prize winning book, Beloved. Dynamo Denyce Graves, for whom the opera was written, reprises her role as the lead on the 1st and 2nd. 

Porgy and Bess

Lyric Opera of Chicago, Nov. 18th to Dec. 19th  It has been 56 years since legends Leontyne Price, William Warfield, and Cab Calloway performed this Gershwin masterpiece at the Civic Opera House (before the days of the Lyric Opera) and close to 30 years since audiences caught it at the Arie Crown. Now the Lyric gets its long-awaited debut courtesy of the Washington National Opera, whose lavish production wowed audiences in D.C.

Photography:© 2007 Denyce graves